R3 China appoints Jiang Jie as director for the China market

Based in Beijing, Jiang will manage operation of the China market with key clients such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson and Visa in addition to overseeing international clients.

In her new role, Jiang will also lead the development of En-Spire, a research and benchmarking study measuring marketers’ return on assets including celebrity endorsement, television, digital and social media. The study is currently focusing on the World Cup and Shanghai Expo.

"The whole agency industry is slowly moving towards a low-value labor-intensive direction and getting away from its original promise as 'business partner' to marketers," said Jiang. She added that in stop this 'vicious circle', clients need to understand the merits of long term relationship with their agencies and take a 'big picture' perspective instead of execution-oriented approach. Agencies are also obligated to upgrade their service offerings.

Prior to R3, Jiang was the planning director at Dentsu Beijing. Clients she has worked with include Lenovo, Mengniu, and Citic Bank. She began her career at JWT Shanghai and subsequently moved into the marketing industry in the United States and Japan.

Jiang will report directly to Greg Paull, principal of R3. “The fact that we’ve hired a strategic planner is a sign of our aspirations. Increasingly our focus is more on return on investment, media and assets than just on agency costs,” said Paull.

Seperately, Sabrina Lee joined as director of R3-GC China in April, also in the Beijing operation.